Holy Fire

Warner Bros. / Transgressive; 2013

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Music from this release

Foals: "Inhaler"

For nearly two minutes, "Inhaler" does not sound like the triumphant return of one of Britain's most successful modern bands. In fact, it sounds claustrophobic-- hookless, even. During what feels like the chorus, Yannis Philippakis can't quite get hold of a melody that sounds like it might never resolve. All the while, he's being cramped by increasing amounts of reverb. But then, at about the 1:45 mark, he yells, "and I can't get enough... SPACE!" and then Foals break the song wide open with a riff that's startlingly low-slung and grunge-y for technically proficient guys who otherwise proudly wield their guitars pecs-high. You can easily hear a throng of festival-goers absolutely losing its shit during this extremely self-reflexive moment, and there's more like it on Holy Fire, which is a good thing. On 2010's Total Life Forever, a band once known for spindly, inscrutable songs like "Mathletics" made a shift to expansive and emotive rock in a way that was both surprising and completely logical. With Holy Fire, there's an added element of showmanship that establishes it as a point of no return.

"Inhaler" makes even more sense in the context of Holy Fire's sequencing, as it's preceded by "Prelude" (natch), a four-minute instrumental of build-and-burst dynamics that splits the difference between the Alan Parsons Project's "Sirius" and Interpol's "Untitled" in terms of fostering arena preparedness. There are key moments when everything drops out except for Philippakis' and Jimmy Smith's pinging guitars, and you imagine the floodlights cast on the audience right before the beat drops again. It's hard to hear "Prelude" as being meant for any other purpose.

Not everything about Holy Fire is this obvious, though there is a crowd-pleasing streak where Foals embrace how they can make their most populist, personal, and direct music all at the same time. While leagues more melodic and softly produced than anything on their debut, Antidotes, Total Life Forever singles such as "Blue Blood" and "Miami" still dealt in post-punk terminology, high-fretboard riffs, fractured drumming, verses and choruses fitting at odd angles. "Everytime" and "Bad Habit" (whose verse melody is perilously close to that of TLF's "This Orient") are considerably more tapered and pop-savvy, making the hooks feel like bigger payoffs by gracefully ascending towards them. A similar refinement happens on the maddeningly catchy "My Number", which reshapes the cyclical chants of "Total Life Forever" into a song that's 85% hook; deceptively chipper funk-rock surrounding a bitter declaration of romantic independence where the latter sought eternal companionship. At least in contemporary terms, it's easy to hear them as the muscular, brooding complement to Wild Beasts' limber, libidinous take on wounded British masculinity, although their more overt commercial appeal puts them in the lineage of the Cure in stadium mode, circa Wish.

That's also cause for relief; based on the success of "Spanish Sahara", you'd be forgiven for thinking Holy Fire's title and imperious cover art indicated that they were continuing down that spacious, grandiose path while using U2 as their proverbial North Star. The weakest patches of Holy Fire come when Foals try to repeat "Spanish Sahara". Though Flood and Alan Moulder's production is worth every penny and does everything in its power to make Holy Fire spacious and sparkling, "atmospheric" Foals tends to obscure melody every bit as much as Antidotes' acrobatics. Likewise, while Philipakkis' voice is becoming more versatile and expressive, his lyrics depersonalize what appear to be very personal songs with stock metaphors: "I'm the last cowboy in this town," "Every time I see you, I wanna sail away," "It's times like these when I'm on my way out of the woods," "I know I cannot be true/ I'm an animal just like you."

Though a dead heat in terms of overall quality, and similarly prone to cooling off considerably in its second half, Holy Fire is better proportioned than the top-heavy Total Life Forever. Prior to the nearly beatless and occasionally stirring final 10 minutes, "Milk and Black Spiders" slowly builds from a bed of pinprick harmonics to a stirring chorus in Holy Fire's most effective use of the slow build, and "Providence" at the very least gives its lyrics some feral embodiment with an ear-grabbing octave-shifted riff.

Holy Fire is undoubtedly a very good, ambitious record, one that operates on an artistic economy of scale, where the lustrous production and singles like "My Number" and "Inhaler" do the heavy work of confirming Foals' headliner status. The rest has the easy task of proving the Oxford band to be more emotionally substantial and idiosyncratic than any of their mainstream peers. Like Total Life Forever, Holy Fire threatens greatness, and whatever disappointment comes from missing the mark is mitigated by its scope: A bomb needs to be operational more than it needs to be accurate.